the lacerated
conscience of Martin Luther before he found the Cross, examine the
anxiety and gloom of Chalmers before he saw the Lamb of God, for proof
that this is so. These men, at first, were most earnest in their use of
the law in order to re-instate themselves in right relations with God's
justice. But the more they toiled in this direction, the less they
succeeded. Burning with inward anguish, and with God's arrows sticking
fast in him, shall the transgressor get relief from the attribute of
Divine justice, and the qualities of law? Shall the ten commandments of
Sinai, in any of their forms or uses, send a cooling and calming virtue
through the hot conscience? With these kindling flashes in his
guilt-stricken spirit, shall he run into the very identical fire that
kindled them? Shall he try to quench them in that "Tophet which is ordained
of old; which is made deep and large; the pile of which is fire and much
wood, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle
it?" And yet such is, in reality, the attempt of every man who, upon
being convicted in his conscience of guilt before God, endeavors to
attain peace by resolutions to alter his course of conduct, and strenuous
endeavors to obey the commands of God,--in short by relying upon the law
in any form, as a means of reconciliation. Such is the suicidal effort
of every man who substitutes the law for the gospel, and expects to
produce within himself the everlasting peace of God, by anything short of
the atonement of God.

Let us fix it, then, as a fact, that the feeling of culpability and
unreconciliation can never be removed, so long as we do not look entirely
away from our own character and works to the mere pure mercy of God in
the blood of Christ. The transgressor can never atone for crime by
anything that he can suffer, or anything that he can do. He can never
establish a ground of justification, a reason why he should be forgiven,
by his tears, or his prayers, or his acts. Neither the law, nor his
attempts to obey the law, can re-instate him in his original relations to
justice, and make him perfect again in respect to his conscience. The ten
commandments can never silence his inward misgivings, and his moral
fears; for they are given for the very purpose of producing misgivings,
and causing fears. "The law worketh wrath." And if this truth and
fact be clearly perceived, and boldly acknowledged to his own mind, it
will cut him off from all